


Depression

by LPM



Series: The 5 Stages of Possession [4]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, Derek's Manpain, Drunkenness, Established Relationship, Feels, Light Angst, M/M, Manpain, Masturbation, sterek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-25
Updated: 2013-08-25
Packaged: 2017-12-24 14:26:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/941053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LPM/pseuds/LPM
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"After, there is only his harsh breathing to keep him company when before, there had been Stiles telling him wicked things, funny things, silly things, anything. </p><p>Without him there, the afterglow is not nearly so bright."</p><p>or</p><p>Mistakes are made and realized, can Derek and Stiles' relationship be saved?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Depression

**Author's Note:**

> This chapter is a whole bunch of sadness and dumb people, but relationships all have their share of stupidity and misery. There's sexy things happening down there, worry not, but probably not in the way most would like it >>. Anywho, I wrote this forever ago and am honestly sorry for not putting it up sooner, but I spent like 2 months out of the country with iffy internet connection and an aversion to posting anything at all of such a salacious nature in a country that has some strict anti-homosexual laws...yes laws. 
> 
> Through the weeks and moths, you guys have been a constant source of joy and motivation and I'm dead flattered that y'all read and enjoy my story, all its flaws aside. I know its not really canon and whatnot and 3A has changed a LOT in the canon universe but this story reads as if season 3 hasn't happened. Anyway, thanks you guys, and I hope you enjoy!!!

He wakes up the day after the party, determination an insistent burning pressure in his chest.

He fucked up. He knows he did. Contrary to popular belief, Derek isn't completely oblivious to people's emotions. As much as he struggled with his own for a long time, he is a werewolf and can literally smell the strongest of feelings rising off people in waves. Stiles, after they had parted the previous night, had smelled overwhelmingly of sadness. There was disappointment there in spades, anger in heaps, frustration in piles, but over it all was the bleak grey sadness. He showers and gets dressed that morning, ready to face Stiles and apologize for...whatever it was he'd done. Whatever slight he'd unwittingly delivered to make Stiles smell like that. He'll say sorry for being so short with him, sorry for being so cold, sorry for everything and anything. So long as Stiles forgives him.

The coffee shop is in full swing by the time he gets there, hellbent on righting his wrongs. What brings him up short is the sight of Erica at the register, smiling sunnily at a customer before catching sight of Derek at the door and letting a disapproving scowl twist her lips. Luckily, the customer has already walked off to retrieve their order, and can't see the distinctly animal eyes pointing blame straight at Derek's chest.

"You" she says testily, "have fucked up."

He walks in, irritated at having his faults pointed out to him first thing, and from Erica no less.

"Yeah, I know" he grumbles, "where's Stiles?"

Isaac walks in, making a show of struggling under the weight of several boxes in his arms. He surveys Derek cooly, then sighs in a long-suffering way,

"he quit" he says simply, "came in this morning and told us. Said he figured he didn't need to submit a 2 week's or anything, all things considered."

Derek's mood sours, it plummets to the bottom of a chasm and lays there for dead.

Quit.

If there is one thing anybody knows about Stiles, it's that he isn't the sort of person to just quit things. He'll pursue it doggedly until he reaches a satisfying outcome, or until he gets beaten to a pulp and can't properly continue on in the same vein. Even then, he's shockingly steadfast, for someone with an attention span a fly couldn't envy. To have quit the coffee shop, without even facing Derek, means that Stiles is well and truly done. Derek feels despair erupt in his abdomen, hot and bitter and tinged with the unmistakable edge of blame. There is no getting around it, everyone and their (sassy undead) uncle knows that whatever is going on, is Derek's fault.

"You'd better..." Erica begins, but Derek cuts her off with a snarl and a flash of red eyes. She shuts up.

"Yeah," he says, voice still gravelly, "I'll go talk to him."

* * *

 

He eyes the scrap of green lace in his hand and feels oddly numb. The thong was a gift, and undoubtedly as expensive as a tiny triangle of fabric could get (very). He wore it on St. Patty's Day at school. He can remember the feel of it against his skin as he sat and laughed with friends, getting more and more aware of it as the minutes ticked by. He had gone home early that night and stripped off all his clothes, save for the underwear. Then he took a picture of the green lace ties sitting flush against his jutting hipbone and sent it to Derek.

Four hours later, Derek was in his room and in his bed, making him pay dearly for teasing.

He'd loved every minute of it.

Now he looks on the memory with not a little bitterness, because it's just one of so many reminders of the good times they had together before things had gotten so...wrong.

He doesn't know what they're doing anymore. They started out friends and moved, cliche though it was, to being that plus benefits. It just wasn't practical for Stiles to be attached to someone who lived away from him while he was trying to grow and meet new people at university. So they "messed around" when he came back on breaks, and when he left, they resumed their normal lives. He doesn't know at what point it had become something more, doesn't know when just thinking of Derek felt like he was triggering his heat. He doesn't know when he'd come to think of the way Derek smiles when he's proud of his betas, of how he's protective of Isaac, of how he likes Scott a great deal more than he lets on, as lovable. He doesn't know when all the little things that make Derek overshadowed the carnal instincts that drew them together in the first place. What he does know, is that there's a very big "L" word balancing on the tip of his tongue, and that the word belongs to Derek only. He thought it was obvious, from the way he smells to the way he acts. He can feel it in his pores, can taste it when he breathes. He's undeniably there in his own mind. But, from the ruinous interactions they've had of late, either Derek really doesn't know, or he doesn't feel the same way.

Stiles doesn't want to risk it being the latter. Can't deal with being left out in the cold with his heart ripped to pieces. So he decided to stop, at least for now. He'll back up and rethink his strategy, and then he'll come back. The first step was quitting the coffee shop. If he's to get some distance, there is no way he can stay on there, seeing Derek every day.

He sighs and grips the green lace tightly for a moment before putting it in a cloth bag with the rest of his more...delicate undergarments. He'll get rid of everything that reminds him of Derek, completely separate them, and then he'll try again.

* * *

 

Derek gets quiet when he's nervous. His face grows stormier than usual, his lips pinched and his brows drawn together in a formidable 'V' above eyes that define unfriendliness. He knows he doesn't look at all welcoming, but he can barely control the restlessness of the wolf inside himself, much less worry about something as superficial as facial expression. Stiles understood that about him, it's one reason they worked so well, before all the...strangeness.

When he pulls up to the Stilinski house, he counts himself lucky that the Sheriff is on duty and thus not at home. Taking a quick look around, he jumps up to the window he's used to enter the house hundreds of times before. The one to Stiles' bedroom. It's closed, which is unusual. Derek's brow wrinkles further in confusion as he goes to try and lift the window up but finds he can't. It's like an invisible barrier separates the thin sliver of air between Derek's hands and the window. He looks down.

Mountain Ash.

He swallows around the sudden onslaught of pure hurt that threatens to overtake him. In all of their years of knowing each other, even before they had come together in passion, even before they were even friends, Stiles has never once used Mountain Ash on his window. Pain blossoms in his heart, spreading like poison through his body.

He wanted to talk to Stiles, had wanted to apologize and make things right again. To hold Stiles in the circle of his arms where he could convince himself it's enough to have him then, if not always. But the unbroken line of black ashes drawn across the widow sill is like a denial in all capital letters. Stiles is well and truly finished with him, has taken the final step to ensure that Derek can't even get in. The mountain ash is as firm a rejection as Derek has ever encountered from Stiles, even when they had their fights.

So he jumps down to where his car lays in wait, misery hanging heavy in his heart, and casts one last look up at the familiar window, before getting in the Camaro and speeding off.

* * *

 

A week passes, and then another, and Derek is still drowning. Every morning he wakes up and his bed smells a little more like him, like loneliness and regret. He hasn't so much as seen Stiles, not smelled the unique spice of his scent in so long, he's beginning to think he's forgotten it. Sometimes he'll catch weak whiffs of it off of Erica or Isaac, but it's so faint that it isn't really anything but a ghost of the true thing.

Derek's mood, after plummeting to the depths of the Marianas Trench, has barely lifted in the terrible days since he stared at that stupid line of ash and told himself it was over.

 

"Derek, if you're just gonna lumber around like a stung bear all day, then do us and the shop a favor and don't come in!" Erica snaps at him. Her words are sharp but her eyes bleed sympathy, she and every werewolf within a hundred miles can smell the reek of sadness coming off Derek in gales.

He takes to staying at home, not quite up to facing the day and all the cheerful people. Something about summertime makes joy spring eternal and smiles abound; not exactly what Derek needs. He shuttles between the shop, when he can deal with it, and his house. In the night, he goes to the gym and works out to quell the roar of the wolf inside, as it bays helplessly for the mate he lost.

One night, after a particularly grueling set, he stops by the grocery for some necessities. He's exhausted, his mind blissfully blank as he walks through the store on autopilot. His feet lead him to his usual stops, dairy, fruits and vegetables, cereal. Its while he's picking up a bag of pears that he hears it.

"Dude, dulce de leche or birthday cake!" his ears prick to the voice, oversensitive and automatically attuned to its cadence.

"Ugh! Come on man, let's do Mint Chocolate Chip" Scott is whining and Derek can picture the face he makes at Stiles, who only snorts,

"No way, I hate Mint Chocolate Chip, and you only want to get it so you can share the leftovers with Allison! Don't think I don't know its her favorite!"

They continue their bickering, moving through the store and grabbing what Derek knows consists mostly of chips and pop-tarts. Almost against his will, his feet guide him in the direction of their voices. When he spots Scott's tuft of dark hair, he swiftly ducks behind a large shelf and looks out cautiously.  
His first look at Stiles in two weeks hits him like a freight train. It's night so both of the boys are dressed rather shabbily, looking as if they'd only put on sneakers without bothering to change out of their pajamas. Stiles wears a t-shirt that Derek realizes, sucking in a sharp breath, is one of his. Just a bit too big and definitely not as bright as Stiles' usual selection. His hair sticks up in a delicious tousled thatch atop his head and Derek is reminded powerfully of what he looked like when they woke up together in the mornings. His nostrils flare, though the scents of people and produce in the supermarket make catching Stiles' particular essence impossible.

A hot fist of longing lodges itself firmly in Derek's gut, winding him. Stiles is so close, within speaking distance. And yet, it's as if that line of mountain ash lies between them even there, and Derek can't walk forward. So he steps back, the bitterness of the past 2 weeks resurfacing. His heart hammers in his chest and he's sure he looks murderous as he pays for his groceries and races out of the market and to his car.

He doesn't so much drive home as he does race there, as if chased by the demons of everything that has gone wrong between him and Stiles. He slams out of his car and into his apartment, chucking his groceries away with uncalledfor brutality before striding into his bedroom and shutting the door.

He's burning up.

He tears off his coat, his sweat-soaked wife beater, his shorts and shoes, until he's in nothing but his boxers. Being free of his clothes feels better, and he knows he wants to shift, to become the wolf and run until he doesn't feel so dismal.

He's been such a fool. Too blind to his emotions until it was too late to tell the one person that matters how he really feels. He suffers, visited by the image of the mountain ash on that window sill, shutting him out. It's torture to know that he isn't wanted, it was torture to see Stiles when he could do nothing more than want and want and want. When Stiles looked like salvation itself, standing unaware right before Derek's eyes.

He groans pitiably, sinking to his bed on shaky knees. The image of Stiles from the market fills his mind, opens a floodgate of memories that Derek has been trying to suppress. It's no use now, he can't control the shift while trying so hard not to think about Stiles. And so he lets go, slides a hand beneath the waistband of his boxers to find his length, wraps his fingers firm and hot around the turgid member and strokes.

A growl forms deep in his chest, vibrating up to his throat and expelling itself into the still air. He thinks of the paleness of Stiles' long throat; of the moles standing stark against blushing alabaster skin. He thinks of lean muscles, shifting in slow ecstasy as burnt umber eyes gaze into his own and cherry blossom lips beg him for more.

Heat spreads low in his belly as sharply remembered embraces trace phantom paths of sparkling desire along his spine. Oh god. Oh Mother Moon and Blessed Three***, how he burns. How his mind supplies fodder for his fantasy. The room is full of gasping breaths, flexing thighs, sweat-slick hips gripped tight in his hands as he thrusts in and out, in and out. His eyes shut against the onslaught of sensations, even as his hand speeds up its ministrations.

He remembers the grasping slide of intimate flesh when he'd hit just the right spot, how Stiles would keen high and bright, body arching skyward. Or if he had him on his knees, one hand pressed against his back as the lewd slap of colliding bodies accompanied his litany of moans, how Stiles' knuckles would turn white as he gripped the sheets. Always harder, "Derek please", and faster; always eager to take the thickness of Derek's desire as deep inside as he could manage.

Derek croaks out a name that might be Stiles but he's cresting the peak, riding out the last brilliant stroke of his fist all the way to its end. And then he's coming, and coming, the name giving way to a guttural groan.

After, there is only his harsh breathing to keep him company when before, there had been Stiles telling him wicked things, funny things, silly things, anything.

Without him there, the afterglow is not nearly so bright.

* * *

 

Scott takes a swig of the Henny and coke jug before passing it to Stiles, who is well on his way to being properly snockered.

"No'm gud" Stiles slurs.

Scratch that, Stiles is already three sheets to the wind. At least he's still sober enough to know that anymore Hennessy and he'll wake up feeling like roadkill the next day; not that he and Scott aren't already courting nasty hangovers with the amount they'd already drank. The Hennessy had been sitting in his dad's bar for months, Stiles figured it was better put to use helping him through the quasi-breakup blues.

"Dude...what're you doin'?" Scott asks, giving halfhearted attention to their COD game. Stiles shrugs and shoots him a lopsided grin,

"Kickin' yo asssssss at COD" he says.

Scott pauses a moment to process that zinger before smacking Stiles over the head,

"No dude, what're you doing here with me when...when you love Derek?"

Stiles frowns, concentrating hard on shooting something, anything, before giving it up for a bad job. Liquor messes with his coordination anyways.

"I don't...I'm not in love with..." he begins, but Scott's frustrated growl stops him,

"no dude, no, you so are. You love him! Go...go to his 'parrment and tell him. Not here geddin drunk" he says, facing Stiles with sudden fierceness.

Stiles is taken aback.

"But...but he don't love me back!" he wails pitifully, tears that would never see the light of day otherwise, leaking out of his eyes. "he on'y wanmme for my body!"

Scott scrunches his face in drunken disgust, but continues his pep talk. He fixes Stiles with an incredulous eye,

"Whadd're you talkin bout!?" he exclaims, "Derek...Derek LOVES you dude. Like...he wants you to have his lil babies!"

Stiles stops crying and looks mistrustfully at Scott,

"How d'ya know?" he asks, half stuck in disbelief and half hopeful. Scott straightens up and looks as serious as the copious amount of alcohol he'd imbibed in allowed,

"trust me" he says sagely, "you don' see him look at you...he has my face..." they both scrunch their faces up at that one and Scott tries again,

"he has my Isaac face!" he says by way of explanation. Stiles understands of course, they aren't best bros for nothing. What Scott means is that Derek's face when he looks at Stiles, is what Scott looks like when he sees Isaac. All mushy and sick in love. Stiles wonders why he's never noticed.

"Why don't he say nufin!?" he groans, and Scott falls back against the couch they sit on,

"he prolly din' know" he says, "Derek's a dumbass like that."

And doesn't that make sense!? Stiles is suddenly pissed, because a whole lot of misery could have been stopped from happening if only Derek wasn't such a...a...

"dumb butt!" Stiles declares. Scott looks confused again, but that might just be the alcohol. Stiles scrabbles for his phone and angrily selects Derek's number.

Derek Hale is a dumb butt who loves him and who he loves and Stiles is going to tell him to stop being so dumb.

The phone goes to voicemail, it being a heinous hour of the night, but Stiles starts his rant regardless, and then hangs up, feeling satisfied.

"There, I did it" he says proudly and flings his phone into his backpack before wrestling Scott off the couch so he can pass out.

He really shouldn't have drank so much, the hangover is going to be monstrous.

FIN

* * *

  
***Mother Moon and Blessed Three - in my werewolf universe, the origin tale involves the Mother Moon and her consort, who gave birth to the first wolves.They're called the Blessed Three, Alpha, Beta, and Omega and are the first of wolfkind.

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> My Teen Wolf Sterek universe is pretty pervasive, I feel like, no matter what fic I'm writing, there's always elements that come through. Like my werewolf lore or the names of Derek's family, which I'm aware are not canon but I don't really care. What kind of name is Cora anyway!? Sigh, whatever. I hope this wasn't like, too much of a downer, we need the sad parts to make the absolute filth I have planned for the next chapter that much better. It'll probably go up soontimes, so in the meantime, you chickies stay gorgeous and sailing this ship!


End file.
